La Pluma (“the Quill”) is a French swordsman and musician of the gesta (campaign-cycle), “the sword of the two centuries”, self-proclaimed liberator of the United States of America. His fame precedes him in the ghetto.
| Type | Character |
| Spanish entry | La Pluma |
Description
Wet red hair falls to one side. He carries a guitar (in place of a lute), a map and a bag; at his belt, a scimitar and two swords girded a la bulsanza oriental, like a katana and wakizashi. His sword is “forged like a piece of the sun”.
Through his gloves, which hide his fingers, manifests a power tied to the platform of Virgo, “the platform of this place”; he seeks to learn whether he is its guardian or its cantillero.
The name
“Quills are dipped in blood” and “swords are written with blood”; quills are charged with the host’s blood to write. Recorded quills: a black one that signs a death sentence of the revolution and of a Christ not yet born; an angel’s, “especially important at this moment”; and a valued one of ancient, distant parrots.
Past lives
His past lives reach the companions as shared visions, “very confused” like dreams, though he says “I haven’t dreamed in a long time.” They show:
- A man of about twenty lets a girl clutching a red book leave with a dark being with shining eyes.
- A young man sees Tel throw a quill and fall into a well on a tropical island — a shared trauma binding him timelessly to that disembodied spirit.
- “The youngest Quill” eating an apple.
He is stepfather to Helter, whose mother is Tel. With Lotario he shares “devils impossible to defeat”.
Conflicting accounts
- His French birth and American liberation are read as two overlapping incarnations, or as one identity.
Open questions
- Which two centuries the epithet names.
- What bulsanza is, and how three blades fit one belt.
- What distinguishes a cantillero from a guardian; whether he carries any of the quills.
- Whether the girl with the red book and the woman at the well are one figure, or Tel; where the tavern, ghetto and island are.